If I’d had my own eyes, I’d have not seen anything ready to drop down on me. With the dragon’s, I made out the impossibly thin stick figure falling into the grave. Even the head was nothing more than a stick. I’d found my Wyld, lucky me.
Before I could raise Her Lady’s gift, a pile of dirt blinded me. The Wyld had evidently noticed I could see in the dark, so it’d done the logical thing and removed all my view. I was reduced to swinging the sword back and forth, hoping for even a graze. It wouldn’t take much more than that for Her Lady’s gift to do its work.
There was no squeal, which meant that I’d missed. More dirt spilled over my face, into my mouth, almost choking me in the process.
A savage growl filled my ears. It was followed by a hideous hiss that had to come from the Wyld. Another growl came in response. The sounds of a violent struggle ensued.
Wiping away the dirt, I beheld the stick figure struggling with a massive beast, something like a cross between a sleek greyhound and a savage wolf. Fetch was far, far more than either, though, a once powerful servant of Feirie now reduced to skulking around the streets of Chicago when he wasn’t assisting me.
The stick figure’s left arm abruptly sharpened to a point. The creatures of Feirie were often very fluid of form, especially those spawned nearest the realm’s primal forces. The Wyld thrust its limb at Fetch with a lunge worthy of Douglas Fairbanks’s Zorro. Fetch managed to dodge the strike, then moved in again.
I jumped up. In my head, the dragon all but roared, Unleash me! Unleash me! Eye will burn it away!
I was sorely tempted, but I fought down the suggestion even as I closed on the Wyld. Unleashing the dragon might cause far more calamity than one denizen of Feirie.
The stick figure turned as I reached it. Instead of attacking, though, it leapt straight up, then landed on the outer edge of the grave. I jabbed as it moved, but missed.
Fetch did his best to climb out after the thing. Unfortunately, by the time we both made it up, there was no sign of our quarry. I surveyed the area, but couldn’t even sense a trace.
“Fetch?”
He sniffed the air. “Not a whiff, Master Nicholas! Looks like it’s taken it on the lam!”
I let Fetch’s penchant for human slang pass as I extended Her Lady’s gift as far as I could reach. Nothing.
“Shall I give chase?”
“Where?” I turned the sword around and returned it to my overcoat. It went back into that dark space Her Lady had also provided for it, enabling me to move unencumbered.
And then, I saw her again.
I didn’t know if she’d vanished and returned or just stood there all through our brief struggle with the Wyld. I vaguely wondered if there was some link between her and what had happened, but then she looked my way again and all I could do was stare at her face.
Her face.
“Master Nicholas? Be ye all right? Does something ail ye?”
Instead of answering, I dared tear my gaze from her long enough to look over my shoulder. Of Diocles, there was no sign. I didn’t know if that meant anything, but once more, it paled in importance to her.
Thankfully, she still stood there, staring in my direction. I belatedly noticed the sadness in her eyes.
“Master Nicholas . . . this isn’t copacetic! What ails ye?”
“You don’t see her, either.” I waved off the reply Fetch started. With the utmost caution, I took a step toward her.
Naturally, she disappeared.
Swearing in more than one of the fourteen languages I remained fluent in, I rushed toward the spot.
There were no footprints, of course, not that I’d even really been looking for them. With her gone, there was only one thing I wanted to see.
And there, on the stone, was just that. A name. Below it, a date that began only a year after the Great Fire and ended barely twenty years after that, right during the Columbian Exposition. Just long enough to verify my fears. Just long enough for the damned cycle to begin anew yet again a few years after that.
Her first name had been Claudette. Her last name really didn’t matter. It could’ve been anything. The first name was enough, a variation on a damning theme.
Cleolinda. Clarissa. Claryce. All names for the same old soul, the woman who I’d rescued from a dragon and who then had rescued my heart. There’d been others with such names, spread far apart through the centuries. I’d known each and every one of them. Lost each and every one of them save for Claryce . . . so far. They’d all had different backgrounds, different lives, but always the same face.
A face identical to that of the ghost.
Claudette had been another incarnation, one right before Claryce.
An incarnation, despite our supposedly intertwined fates, I’d never met.
CHAPTER 2
I waited near the headstone the rest of the night, hoping for her return. Fetch sat patiently next to me the entire time, no small feat for him, especially once a rabbit passed nearby. Fetch squirmed for a moment then, but that was all.
If I’d been a better person, I’d have let him give chase, but all I could think about was another chance to try to speak to her . . . to Claudette.
Diocles hung around for a while, too, not that I’d encouraged him. After being as silent as the dead for an entire fifteen minutes, he’d begun voicing his opinion on not just my choice here, but other related matters.
“It will probably not materialize again, Georgius. Manifestation is a matter of strong will at the best of times.” When I said nothing, he’d switched to the topic I’d been trying to avoid thinking about. “And again, what does it matter? Even if some vestige of this poor woman does remain, if she is the princess reborn, then her true soul, her true essence, now resides in Claryce Simone . . . with whom you have decided you will not have anything to do.”
Fetch could neither see nor hear Diocles, but he could certainly see my reaction. Ears flattened, he’d had the sense to scramble away as I’d spun on the emperor. “Leave. Leave now.”
Diocles had done just that. We’d both known that there was nothing I could do to him, but he’d likely seen that it was better for both of us if he let me be. I’d glared at the empty space where he’d stood, then silently went back to my vigil.
Of course, he’d been right. She’d never reappeared. I’d finally left the cemetery just as the first hints of light had begun showing up on the horizon. With Fetch eagerly sitting in the seat next to me, I’d driven the Packard roadster I’d inherited from my battle with the former king of Feirie back to the gray Queen Anne house that I used for home and base in this particular century. The neighborhood was a quiet one not far from the heart of the Cabbage Patch, once the center of German immigration in Chicago and a place that had managed to at least in part survive the Great Fire intact.
Fetch rode along merrily enough in the car, but the moment we reached the house, his ears flattened again.
“You coming in?” I asked him as we pulled up. We’d had a short but rough period after Oberon . . . the enticements of Feirie very strong for an exile like Fetch . . . but he’d come through in the end, and that’d made it easier to forgive his lapse.
“I thank ye, Master Nicholas, but I’ll not be stepping in there for a time. Her taint’s still on this place. Gives me the heebie-jeebies, it does. . . .”
I couldn’t blame him. The house had been brought to the ground by Oberon’s human goons, then reconstructed in its entirety by his former love, the queen of Feirie, without my neighbors even realizing it. In the process, she’d given herself a portal of sorts into our world. However, after I’d destroyed Oberon, I’d made certain to have her remove all aspects of her power. The house was the house, but even I didn’t trust that there might not be some lingering traces of Her Lady’s magic.
Still, I suspected that Fetch had another reason, one that we’d silently agreed not to speak about during the drive back. “How is she, Fetch?”
“I’ve done just as ye asked, haven’t buzzed her
once since you said to leave her be.”
“‘Buzzed’?” Before he could translate his latest verbal acquisition, I pressed on. “You’ve seen her. Just admit it.”
“But, Master Nicholas, what good would that be? I cannot speak with her unless you’re near, ye know that! Only ye and Kravayik can jaw with me!”
Kravayik was an exile like Fetch—an exile from Her Lady’s Court, in fact—who’d gone through an even greater change since crossing to this side of the Gate. Kravayik, once a senior enforcer of the Court, had found God. He had converted to Christianity and even now served in Holy Name Cathedral as an unofficial caretaker.
Fetch, too, had acted as an enforcer of sorts for Feirie. In fact, his last mission for Her Lady had been my intended assassination. Fate had changed courses for both of us, and Fetch had ended up being left for dead himself by the Court. I’d managed to keep him alive, and he’d been grateful ever since . . . or at least as grateful as any of the Feirie folk could be.
“But you did see her, didn’t you? Even after I warned you to steer clear? Admit it.”
He let out a short whine. With the power of Feirie behind him, he’d been a powerful shapeshifter, a thing lupine in nature but also almost manlike. Without it, he couldn’t even change from the hound he appeared as now. That didn’t seem to bother him too much, though. What did, evidently, was possibly angering me by disobeying my orders where Claryce was concerned.
“You saw her.” I no longer questioned him. I knew. The thought suddenly got my blood stirring.
My anger must’ve shown more than I thought. Back arched, fur stiff, he responded, “She didn’t see me! I swear!”
He was a terrible liar. Still, I fought down my fury. “How—how long has this been going on?”
“Only a week. . . .” Fetch straightened. “She misses ye something fierce, but she’s a tough egg, Master Nicholas! She’s pushing on even after Oberon.”
I couldn’t deny that I was glad to hear she was okay, but I still felt betrayed. Naturally, that brought a snicker from my unseen companion, who had remained oddly silent since the cemetery. I didn’t like how no one seemed to be listening to my demands anymore, but I let that pass as my curiosity got the better of me. “She’s okay, then.”
“Other than not seeing ye, she is.”
“Is she still at Oberon’s?” In the guise of businessman William Delke, Oberon’d lured Claryce to him by offering her a position in his company. Having had encounters with me over the previous centuries, he’d recognized her as the reincarnation of Cleolinda and used her for bait. Of course, much to his ultimate misfortune, Claryce’d proven to be pretty independent bait.
“Nay. She lives over a bookstore.”
I’d expected her situation to change, but not quite so quickly. “She’s no longer with Delke Industries, then.”
“For a bit, still, but she said—”
He tried to cut himself off, but he’d already said one word too much. Anger rushed through me, stronger than ever. “So you did meet with her? You were supposed to stay away from her! I ordered you to!”
Fetch leapt out of the roadster and didn’t stop until he was across the street. I gripped the wheel with one hand as I fought with the notion of throttling him.
I heard a wrenching sound from near the wheel. Glancing there, I saw that I’d just crushed the top of the wheel. Worse, my hand had grown longer . . . and scaled to boot.
I’d let a part of the dragon out without even noticing.
“Take it back,” I growled. “Take the power back. . . .”
The dragon said nothing, but my hand reverted to normal in an instant. I shuddered. Once again, I’d lost control. This time badly. For a brief moment, I’d actually wanted to kill Fetch.
I looked back to Fetch, who stood with his tail between his legs watching me warily. I started to beckon him back, but the moment I raised my other hand toward him, he turned and raced off.
Inside my head, the dragon snickered.
“Damn you,” I whispered, not quite certain if I meant the dragon or myself. I finally jumped out of the Packard and headed inside the nondescript house.
The furnishings inside could be called eclectic at best, some of them simply timeworn, others obviously antiques of tremendous value. I hadn’t tried to collect things over the sixteen hundred years of my service to the Gate, but it’d happened anyway. Each piece, even the most innocuous one, had some bit of personal history. It might’ve seemed mad to anyone else that over the centuries I’d gone through the trouble of sending carts and boats across Asia Minor, Europe, and then the Atlantic just to keep these, but somewhere along the way I’d decided I was owed that much.
The dragon never mocked this eccentricity on my part. I’d wondered if it had anything to do with the stories of his kind hoarding gold and other things they found valuable, but had never bothered to ask. He wouldn’t have given me a straight answer, anyway. I only knew that on occasion I sensed he took some little comfort in these bits of our history, too.
I should’ve gotten some sleep, but the incident in the cemetery still lingered with me. I glanced at the pile of newspapers atop an oak table that’d been an antique back when the States had still been colonies and finally grabbed one. Pulling up a chair, I started scouring the headlines.
There was no one factor that made me decide which articles to cut out. I went by feeling. The story of a theft at a bookshop was my first choice. After checking the back of the page to make sure there wasn’t a story of more interest, I removed the news item from the paper and placed it on the side. Over the next half hour, I added three more, one concerning local politics and the other pair about minor incidents overseas. There was a good chance I might never look at them again . . . but then again, I might.
In another room, there stood file cabinet after file cabinet of organized clippings. Some of them were well over a century old. Unlike my furnishings, they were a necessary part of my endless task. Through the articles I stored in them, I tried to glean any threats somehow related to the Gate. Wyld might lurk for generations before they dared mischief. The theft from the bookshop—and I did wonder if it was the same one Claryce now lived over—could concern a book containing ancient words of power. The money stolen might’ve been merely a cover. I couldn’t take a chance.
I pulled over yesterday’s Daily News and started anew. On the lower part of the front page, I noted a story about a body found in the Chicago River. Male, but so long in the water not much else could be said about it. The police believed it part of the bootlegger wars, which meant that they wouldn’t follow through with an investigation unless someone came along with different information. I suspected the same as the police, but cut it out, regardless. Oberon had had ties with Bugs Moran’s North Side mob; other Wyld might try to do the same with either Moran or his rival, Capone.
Thinking of Moran, I pulled the latest issue of the Herald Examiner next. It was an open secret that the mobs also ran the newspaper distribution for several of the papers, including the Herald Examiner. Running that distribution meant pressuring stands and stores to carry one paper over another.
But exhaustion overtook me at some point, and only when the candlestick telephone in the front hall rang did I realize I’d never gotten past the second page. I dropped the paper and jumped to my feet. Only then did I remember my appointment. I glanced at my wristwatch, a recent addition, to find I’d just slept long enough to miss my preliminary appointment with my latest “clients.”
Quickly putting the receiver to my ear, I picked up the phone and answered. “Hello?”
“Master Nicholas. . . .” came a rough voice. I’d never asked anyone to call me by such a title, but there were three who insisted. Two, including Fetch, did so because they’d been spawned serving the Court of Feirie, where, even with its dark excesses, it always insisted on formality.
The third, though, was a man . . . more or less. “Barnaby.”
Barnaby had long ago delved into what so
me might’ve called the magical arts. He’d done it with the best of intentions, seeking to help his family and friends. Barnaby hadn’t managed to achieve much with it and had eventually satisfied himself with collecting bits and pieces that intrigued him as he built up a profitable auto repair shop. In the end, it’d turned out that tinkering with cars had proven a more satisfying outlet for Barnaby than tinkering with the supernatural.
A shame the same couldn’t have been said for Joseph.
“Forgive me for calling. I wouldn’t have . . . but with my Emma gone, there’s no one else who’d understand.”
I frowned. Barnaby only mentioned his Emma—dead twenty years—in regard to one subject. “You’ve seen Joseph?”
A sigh preceded his answer. “I know, you did warn me that it wouldn’t do much good, but it was Emma’s birthday, so I couldn’t help trying to talk with him about her. I thought that maybe his mother’s birthday of all days might stir him up.”
“And did it?”
“No. He just kept staring at my shadow on the wall. Just like always. Just like since the Wingfoot crash six years ago.”
The pain I heard in his voice kept me from further reprimanding him for wasting his time on Joseph. I’d managed to save Barnaby’s son from his own ambition, but at a tremendous cost. Yes, Joseph had survived the dirigible’s crash into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building, but in the collision he’d suffered a terrible head injury. Barnaby had no choice but to consign his only child to Dunning.
Officially, it wasn’t called Dunning anymore. In the hopes of whitewashing its past, the county had renamed it the Chicago State Hospital and put out a bunch of pretty announcements about its services.
But most people still called it Dunning.
It wasn’t a pleasant place, but it was the only choice for those like Joseph. Joseph had been there for more than five years now with little change. Yet, Barnaby continued to hope.
I’d lived too long to believe in such hope.
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